Suchergebnisse

The article analyzes Russian direct investments in Latin America, their scale and structure. The study is based both on official statistics on foreign direct investment (FDI) stocks and on information about the investments of Russian MNEs in Latin American countries published on company websites and in the media (including trans-shipping FDI). It is shown that Latin America has attracted insignificant Russian FDI so far, and it looks modest even against the background of Africa which is also poorly developed by Russian MNEs in the Global South. Moreover, in Africa there are at least bridgeheads for further Russian investment expansion. There are several negative factors: the remoteness of Latin America from Russia, language barriers, the lack of sufficient awareness of potential investors about business development opportunities in the region and the general backlog accumulated over the past periods from Western and local investors-competitors in business activity in Latin America. Moreover, individual significant projects of Russian direct investors are still to a small extent related to the structure of commodity exports from Russia to various Latin American states. In 2022 conditions for new Russian direct investments in most countries of the region have not improved at all due to sanctions pressure on Russia from the United States and EU countries, traditionally dominant among investors in Latin America (along with mutual flows of FDI made by their own Latin American MNEs). At the same time, the article emphasizes that without the entry of Russian MNEs into the number of major players, at least in most countries of the region, it is impossible to talk about a full-fledged economic turn of the Russian Federation to the global South.

The first publications on the spatial diffusion of foreign direct investment (FDI) appeared in the 1970s-1990s. Since then, many of their provisions have been repeatedly criticised as outdated and inconsistent with empirical evidence of the current stage of globalisation. Previously, only examples of 'newcomers' to internationalisation were used to illustrate distinct phases in the expansion of transnational companies and their effort to first establish themselves in major economic centres, as the factor of gradually growing awareness of potential investors began to play an important role. This article aims to show the persistent character of FDI spatial diffusion patterns and their correlation with the existing hierarchy of cities. In our research, we used the example of Asian companies working in the Baltic states, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, newcomers to internationalisation, not affected by the 'neighbourhood effect', and contrasted them with Western European investors. We confirmed the validity of the hierarchical wavelike model of the FDI spatial diffusion with the dominance of metropolitan urban agglomerations. It was also found that mergers and acquisitions are dominant forms of FDI in developed countries. Their ascendancy leads both to a distortion of the geographical pattern of subsidiaries networks of investor companies and to the intention of investors to sell their assets in provinces and move their head offices closer to capital cities. Consequently, there is a simplification of the structure of businesses, which is typical of the earlier stages of the FDI spatial diffusion.

This article develops a methodology for studying the geography of companies - an area of human geography that remains understudied in Russia. The authors refer to foreign direct investment (FDI) studies to stress the importance of analysing individual transnational corporations. Special attention is paid to FDI statistics, including international statistics provided by IMF, OECD, and UNCTAD, the official data of central banks on FDI destinations, and information on companies' assets by geographical segments. The article emphasises limitations of classical localisation concepts (e. g. A. Lösch's theory) and key concepts of transnationalisation (e. g. J. H. Dunning's "eclectic paradigm", R. Vernon's 'product life cycle', and the 'flying geese paradigm' developed by Japanese authors). Dynamic localisation concepts (e. g. the Uppsala model and hierarchical/wave diffusion models) are considered an important contribution to the existing theoretical framework for studying FDI geography. Various patterns of spatial d istribution of FDI are examined taking Russian transboundary investments, including those distorted by the "neighbourhood effect" as an example.

The aim of this study is to examine the place of the Baltic States on the corporate world map, a contemporary, foreign-investment-driven alternative to the more familiar political map. To this end, the author studies the geographical place of the Baltics in the documentation of transnational corporations. The research database consists of financial reports and presentations of 60 leading European (including Russian) transnational corporations. Special attention is paid to companies from countries with significant FDI stock in the Baltic States. This study is a first step towards analyzing international investors' interpretation of the new European borders. The connection between the neighborhood effect on FDI distribution and geographical segmentation in the corporate paperwork is established. Some companies use a multilevel division (e. g. Europe/Eastern Europe), where the Baltics is usually associated with "Europe" (with or without Russia and Turkey). However, in some cases the Baltic States are clustered u nder "home market" (as is the case with some Swedish companies), "former Soviet Union" (some Russian companies), "Northern Europe and Central Asia," and even "Middle East and Eastern Europe." Varying understanding of where exactly th borders of Europe lie could explain the plurality of attitudes of the European business establishment to the EU sanctions against Russia.

The paper examines flows of foreign direct
investment within the Baltic region. The author
demonstrates close investment ties among the
EU members, which are of special importance
for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Transborder
corporate integration in the region is
characterized by significant imbalances. In
many aspects, it can be viewed as Sweden's
economic expansion or development of domestic
markets for northern European companies.
Although many German, Polish and Russian
companies are involved in corporate integration
in the Baltic region, other vectors of their
foreign economic relations are still more important
for them. As a result, the integration of
Russian business in the Baltic part of the
European integration area is still rather weak
despite Russia's considerable foreign direct
investment in the Baltic States.

The article describes changes in the cross-border cooperation support in the framework of the EU Regional Policy. The author emphasises the role of the European Neighbourhood Policy in the development of cross-border cooperation with non-EU countries. The article outlines the main obstacles for the development of euroregions at the EU-Russia border and arrives at the conclusion that their future depends on the success of the Russia-EU integration process in general.

In light of some new aspects of the EU functioning, particularly, the recovery from the 2008-2009 global crisis, transportation and energy development projects are coming to the forefront in the Baltic region. At the same time, there is a need to consider EU's recent adoption of a common seven-year financial program (2014-2020), which serves, in effect, as the Union's budget. Given that, one may conclude that the countries of the Baltic region are entering a new stage of development. We look at the role and significance of transportation and energy projects as an instrument of economic development. Having studied the largest transport and energy projects in the Baltic region, we were able to show that the new infrastructure networks supported the investment expansion of Swedish and Finnish companies into the post-communist countries of the Baltic Region. Which, in its turn, allowed the Nordic investors to expand their domestic markets. The analysis also shows that the experience of private businesses proves a recent theoretical concept - the pyramid of regional development factors. As a result, the actual regional policy of the EU cannot be considered in the narrow sense of the Cohesion Policy alone.